Last night, my track session was much more exciting than usual. Track, exciting? How is that possible? Bring an elite runner to coach your session and you’ve got it!

My club organised for Mara Yamauchi to coach a track session for those of us preparing for a marathon (but not only). Mara Yamauchi is a British road running athlete and current holder of the 2nd fastest marathon time by a British Woman, just behind Paula Radcliffe. To be honest I had never heard of Mara but I don’t know many running athletes except for the big running celebrities we always hear of. Not enough of a running nerd after all!

Mara was really down-to-earth and approachable. She started the session with 3 warm up laps and a dynamic stretching session. We then had to do 5x 1km with

• 400m at 80% effort (half marathon effort)
• middle 200m at 95% effort (sprint)
• 400m at 80% effort (try half marathon effort again after a sprint… yes, that’s hard!)
• 90s to 2min recovery (jogging on the spot).

The first lap felt fine, maybe because I didn’t push enough, but it obviously got harder as the laps passed. We were running in small groups of similar speed and doing so helped me in the middle 200m sprint (where my competitive spirit made me want to overtake my mates), and in the final 400m where it pushed me not to slack off.

I loved varying the pace, however hard it was. Made for a more varied and interesting session. Mara is coming back in a month time, I hope to be able to join it again! And I’ll take a picture next time, may even ask for a selfie! 🙂